The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. Due to the now ubiquitous nature of electronic communication devices, people of all ages and education levels are utilizing electronic devices to communicate with other individuals or contacts, receive services and/or share information, media and other content. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of convenience to users relates to 3D audio rendering for media players on electronic communication devices (e.g., mobile phones). At present, many users utilize electronic communication devices to play audio data such as music (e.g., albums) that may be contained in music libraries, audio associated with movies, video clips or the like. The audio data may be coded to achieve 3D audio (e.g., spatial audio) effects. However, the audio data may be in any format such as for example multi channel, stereo, monophonic, etc.
Since many users utilize electronic communication devices to play media content, it may be desirable to provide a mechanism for a communication device to facilitate efficient browsing of a collection of media data (e.g., musical items such as songs) and selection of a media item (e.g., a song from a music library (e.g., album) from the collection. For instance, the increasing memory resources of communication devices have enabled users to store a wide selection of media content consisting of for example thousands of music items. As such, selecting and finding a desired media item is becoming more difficult since a user typically needs to browse through long lists of media items (e.g., musical libraries, movie libraries, etc.).
FIG. 1 presents an example of a tree structure of a media collection in which a user of a communication device may navigate to find desired media content. As shown in FIG. 1, typically, the media content is indexed based on the name of an album, movie, image, etc. or the media items may be categorized for example by the author, composer, performer or band name. In addition, representative pictures such as album covers (e.g., album covers 1, 2 & 3 of FIG. 2) or movie posters may be viewed by the user on a display of a communication device. As such, the conventional mechanism for browsing the media content on a communication device is based on an indexed list of media items, music albums, authors, composers, genre, etc. However, relying only on visual feedback regarding the selection of media content may not necessarily be the most efficient mechanism of selection. For instance, the user may not be able to concentrate on reading the names of the images for selection while for example walking on a street or driving a car, which may inhibit the user's ability to select media content associated with the images.
Alternatively, as shown in FIG. 2, the browsing of media content may be performed via a graphical user interface, of a communication device, having 3D rendered images of album covers (e.g., album covers 1, 2 & 3), movie posters, etc. The user may see a plurality of items simultaneous on a display of the communication device and may scroll the possible selections for example with a pointing device on a keypad or by sliding a finger or stylus on a touch screen of the display. FIG. 2 also presents an example in which the album covers may be flipped on the display. In this example, the selection of the album covers on the display may be changed by sliding a finger on a touch screen.
The conventional manner in which to select the media data (e.g., album covers 1, 2 & 3) in the example of FIG. 2 is typically by double clicking on one of the album covers (e.g., album cover 1). In response to selecting the desired media content (e.g., an image of album cover 1), the graphical user interface may then play audio (e.g., a song) associated with the selected media data. However, browsing through collections of media items and selecting an item so that audio associated with the selected item is played may not be the most efficient mechanism of browsing a collection of media items (e.g., music library) and selecting a media item for playing the associated audio, especially when the collection of media items is large. For instance, this conventional mechanism of browsing may take a user a long time to get through the playlist and requires visual feedback regarding the selection of the media item.
In view of the foregoing drawbacks, it may be desirable to provide a mechanism that more efficiently facilitates browsing and selection of media items for 3D audio rendering as well as to reduce the high computational load associated with audio coding of 3D audio data.